The black Rover 75 was coming up the road from Castlebridge and it slowed by the Gallows Tree and pulled over on to the rough near it. The driver sat for a moment smoking his pipe, a big man with big shoulders, dressed in a casual dark suit and wearing a dull coppery tie. He was in his early fifties, his face was rugged, archetypal. The mouth was full and the jaw squared. The nose was shapely and strong. The eyebrows were heavy, a little greyed. His hair was mid-brown, greying too. His eyes were hazel and had a mild expression. He was Superintendent Gently. He was from Homicide.
He got out of the car and walked over to the tree. It had been a very large ash tree but now it was dead and greyly sere. The ground beneath and round it was bare and was scattered with paper and rubbish, and there were many tyre-marks and signs that meals had been eaten there. It was on the crest of a slight ridge and the view was extensive on all sides. The dark brecklands stretched about it, softly undulating to their horizons. The brecklands were a sandy, stony waste, and they were dark because of the scurfy heath. Their levels were broken by scattered fir trees, sparse, sand-polished, melancholy.
He stroked the bark of the tree, stood looking down the straight road. It was nearly noon of an October day and there was plenty of traffic on the road. Every few moments came the buzz of a car separating itself from the anonymous stream, then dying back into it again to be replaced by another. There were trucks, too, heavy articulateds, groaning by like tall ships. And motorcycles, several of those: he counted eleven in fifteen minutes. All the long five miles the traffic was scuttling and burrowing and glittering. As far as the black line of Latchford Chase. As far as the cross on Setters’ sketch map.
He knocked out his pipe on the tree and glanced back at the road he had travelled. An Austin-Healey was shooting towards him, but after that was a break of half a mile. He got back in the car, started the engine, waited some moments for the road to empty. He eased the clutch, drew away, slid through the gears, gave her the gas. The Healey was well ahead now, too far for him to hope to catch it, but the road behind it was clear and he could let the 75 rip. It went up fast on the downward grade. He was into the eights very quickly. Soon he was flickering into the nines, which the 75 didn’t often reach. Her engine was straining a very little, the slipstream boomed in his ears. She was steering lighter than he liked it, but not enough to cause him worry. It was fast, very fast. She was right up in the nines. The Healey wasn’t losing him now, he was sitting tight at his distance.
Then the Healey slowed for an overtake, came leaping back down the road to him, and he felt a surge of disappointment as he was compelled to ease off. Still, he was drifting along in the sevens, he went through hard on the Healey’s tail. They were gunning again directly and pushing back to the nines. He felt the excitement spark in him, found himself wanting the extra ten. That line of trees was coming too leisurely, he would like it striding along to engulf him. But he sensed the recklessness in the excitement and he thrust it down under his usual phlegm. It wouldn’t do, he was here to register. The excitement was sought as a point of reference.
They came up on a line of traffic and had to kill it, this time for good. The Healey kept bobbing out impatiently but each time it was baulked. Back in the fives and sixes, padding along like town traffic. No more champagne. No more temptation. They reached the trees and passed a lane that came in diagonally from the left. Setters had marked it, and Gently drove now with one eye on the verge. And soon he spotted it: a violent welt that carved acutely through grass and earth, exploding into a ripped crater and continuing in dragging gashes and raw weals.
He stopped, reversed, and bumped on to the verge. He relit his pipe. He went to look.
‘What’s your first move?’ Setters asked, dropping sugar lumps in his cup of coffee.
‘I’ll see Elton’s people,’ Gently said. ‘Then I’ll talk to Lister’s mother.’
‘Elton’s people don’t know anything,’ Setters said. ‘I’ve got them covered in case he contacts them.’
‘I’d like to see them all the same.’
‘I’ll take you round,’ Setters said.
They were in the lounge of the old Sun, which was still the best hotel in Latchford. Gently had invited Setters to lunch after their conference at Police H.Q. The conference had lasted two hours and had been attended by the Chief Constable, and Setters had formed the private opinion that the proceedings had bored Gently. He was surprised to be asked to lunch. He didn’t know yet what to think of Gently.
He drank some coffee. ‘We thought the girl would’ve helped us,’ he said. ‘Might’ve remembered some point, like the way chummie was dressed. But no, not a thing she remembers. Only him boring in on them. We’re lucky at that, I suppose. Makes it open and shut when we get him.’
‘You asked her about Elton?’ Gently said.
‘Yes,’ Setters said, ‘I asked her. Seemed to worry her, talking about Elton. Said she’d done him wrong or something. But she won’t have that Elton did it.’
‘And she’d been doping.’ Gently said.
Setters nodded. ‘The doc soon tumbled to it. Reefers. Those damned kids get them from somewhere.’
‘Any other cases of that?’
‘Two. It’s the London kids who do it.’
Setters was a large-boned parrot-faced man with dark grey eyes and a bald, conical crown. He had long, sad lines down each side of his mouth which had no expression. He was sharp as a fish-hook.
‘Have you had much trouble with motorbikes?’ Gently asked.
‘Yes,’ Setters said, ‘since the overspills came. Not much before that. The local kids here are tame enough. You get a wild one now and then. But not the way it is now. Not with jeebies and that stuff.’
‘What’s this jeebie business?’ Gently asked.
Setters said nothing for a moment. ‘I get to hear,’ he said presently. ‘I get to hear what goes on. You know about the Beat Generation?’
Gently shrugged. ‘What I read.’
‘We’ve got it here,’ Setters said. ‘We’ve got the beatsters in Latchford. Only here they call themselves jeebies, don’t ask me what for. The teddy-boy stuff is right out. Now it’s jeebies and chicks.’
‘Yes.’ Gently nodded. ‘There’s a lot of it goes on in town. It was the name that puzzled me.’
‘Guess it’s local,’ said Setters. He lit a cigarette, lifted his head to puff smoke. ‘I’ve run across it a lot,’ he said; ‘it’s what this case is mostly about. And I don’t get it all, that’s a fact. I don’t get above a half of it. It’s not gangs any more, though there’s gang stuff in it. And it’s not them dressing all sloppy, and not washing or cutting their hair. Beards, that sort of caper, that isn’t it either. There’s something funny got into those kids. They just don’t figure like they used to.’
‘There’s still hooliganism,’ Gently said, ‘petty crime, and violence.’
‘Yes,’ Setters said, ‘that too.’ But he sounded as though it didn’t mean much. ‘I’ve talked to most of them,’ he said. ‘All the kids who’ve got bikes. If it wasn’t Elton I’m stuck, or there’s some damned good lying going on. But I don’t think so, that’s my hunch. I think they don’t know much about it. They don’t even believe that Lister was busted off. They think we’re cooking it to make it tough for them.’ He filled his lungs, drove the smoke out. ‘You know the angle they keep giving me? They think that Lister did it on purpose. Just for the kick. What do you make of that?’
‘It could be a smokescreen,’ Gently said.
‘Yes,’ Setters said, ‘it could be. But it isn’t, they really believe it. And they don’t know anything. That’s my hunch. ‘So you’re sticking to Elton,’ Gently said.
‘I’m sticking to him,’ Setters said. ‘Until I hear something different. Elton is chummie number one.’
They collected the 75 from the park and drove into the new town area. It lay south-east of the old town, which was mainly stretched along a narrow High Street. It looked raw and unsettled. It was like an exhibition job; it might have been run up for a season’s stand, not really intended to be lived in. It had all come out of an architect’s sketchbook; it was thrown there, not grown there. Maybe it photographed and took prizes, but it hadn’t character, only design. It was the design that stood out. It looked like ideas without finality. It had come easy, it could go easy, it didn’t mingle or take root. It was using local brick and pantile and making both look anonymous.
Paine Road was a shallow crescent of blocks containing six houses. They were brick built with a plastered first storey and reeded wood panels along their fronts. They had wide upper windows with ugly functional frames. The ground floor was taken up with a garage and a utility room and a dustbin cupboard. They were separated from the road by a narrow grass strip intersected by paths and driveways of concrete.
They parked by number 17. Setters rang. The door opened. Gently saw a stout, middle-aged woman, with a small, sharp nose and a thrusting chin.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you again, is it? Well, he ain’t home yet.’
‘This is Superintendent Gently,’ Setters said. ‘He’d like to talk to you, Mrs Elton.’
She shrugged a plump shoulder, stood back from the door. Setters led the way up some plastic-treaded stairs. At the top, at a small landing, Mrs Elton nudged open a door. They went into a long room with long windows facing the road.
‘Sit down,’ Mrs Elton said. ‘You’ve been in and out enough. I’m just making a cup of tea. S’pose you can do with a cup, can’t you?’
Setters declined. Gently accepted. Mrs Elton went through into her kitchen. All this while some jazz had been playing somewhere up on the next floor. The room they were in was shabbily furnished with a pre-war suite and some painted furniture and was at this end a lounge and at the other a dining room. One of the carpets, however, was new, and there was a new self-tuning television set. There were pottery ducks flying on the wall. The small one had had its head knocked off. In a small painted bookcase inconveniently placed were some newspaper-Dickenses and a pile of magazines.
Mrs Elton slid open a service hatch and pushed through it a tea-tray. Then she re-entered the room. She poured the tea, splashing it noisily. She handed Gently his cup, took her own, sat down on the settee.
‘It’s Maureen,’ she said, jabbing a thumb towards the ceiling. ‘Don’t know what she’s coming to. Worse than the other one, Maureen is.’
‘Maureen’s Elton’s sister,’ Setters explained.
‘Yes, twins they are,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Blitz babies the pair of them. Born to trouble, were them two. Now what do you want to ask me what I haven’t told you already? I haven’t seen no more of Laurie. Nor I ain’t heard from him neither.’
‘The superintendent,’ said Setters, ‘is from Scotland Yard.’
‘You don’t say,’ said Mrs Elton. She looked at Gently with satisfaction. ‘Me, I’m from Bethnal,’ she said. ‘Harmer’s Buildings, we lived at. My old man was a porter when we was down in Bethnal, but now he’s in the building lark. Doing all right for himself, he is.’
‘And you’ve just two in your family?’ Gently asked.
‘Just two,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘And that’s enough, I can tell you. Two’s enough in these days.’
‘Have you relatives in London?’ Gently asked.
‘Dozens and dozens,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘There’s my two sisters and our old mother and aunts and uncles and nephews and cousins. And I know you’ve been to look them up cause they’ve writ and told me so. And Laurie ain’t gone to them. Though maybe he’s with his pals in Bethnal.’
‘What pals?’ Gently asked.
‘Kids,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Chums. He ran around like the rest of them, he knows the backsides of Bethnal. But I don’t say you’ll find him there. It’s just a guess, that’s all. There’s nowhere much to hide there, and where there is you must have looked. So I keep thinking of Bethnal. Bethnal’s where I’d look myself.’
Gently nodded. ‘What about his pals round here?’ he asked.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Elton, ‘they’re like they are, that’s all I can say. They’re a quieter lot, in some ways. You don’t get none of that fighting in gangs. Maybe there’s only one gang here, I dunno. But they’re quieter.’
‘And his girlfriends?’ Gently asked.
‘Same with them,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘Was he very friendly with Betty Turner?’
‘Was he,’ she said. ‘He was stuck on that one.’
She hoisted herself off the settee and refilled the cups. The jazz upstairs had stopped, instead one heard a mournful wailing.
‘Maureen,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Gives me the pip that girl does. You should see her room, a proper pickle. And that lazy. Never works for long.’
She sat again, smoothed her skirt.
‘Proper stuck on her,’ she added. ‘I liked her too, she was a decent girl. It’s a shame what’s happened, that’s what I say.’
‘How long were they friends?’ Gently asked.
‘Oh, quite a time,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘When did they stop being friends?’
‘About last Whitsun,’ Mrs Elton said. ‘He’d just got his new motorbike, on the never-never, that is. He was going to take her to Yarmouth, then for some reason she wouldn’t go.’
‘Was he upset?’ Gently asked.
‘Nearly howled,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Went off somewhere on his own and didn’t come back till early morning. Did him a world of good no doubt, it doesn’t harm them to get the brush-off. I reckon a brush-off is educative. When you’re young, that is.’
Gently drank and put down his cup. ‘And after that?’ he said.
‘He soon cheered up,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Laurie isn’t the boy to brood.’
‘Did he mention Lister?’ Gently asked.
‘Not that I remember,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘Did he have a new girlfriend?’ Gently asked.
‘Not particularly he didn’t,’ said Mrs Elton.
She looked squarely at Gently. She had surprising blue eyes. Her face was puffy and her cheeks pallid. She would never have been good-looking.
‘Are you married?’ she asked him.
Gently shook his head.
‘You should be, a man like you,’ she said. ‘And my son isn’t a murderer.’
Gently stirred. ‘We’re not saying he is…’
‘No,’ she said, ‘you haven’t said it.’
Her eyes brimmed over. She felt for a handkerchief. She dabbed at her eyes for a moment. She put it away.
‘It’s like this,’ she said firmly, ‘there ain’t no harm in Laurie, really. He’s a good boy, he always has been, he’s always kind to his old mum.’
She used the handkerchief again.
‘And he’s never been in trouble, really. Just the games they all get up to. He pinched a bike when he was a nipper. And he’s steady he is, he holds a job. There’s never been no complaint there. He’d grow out of it. He’s a good boy. There’s no harm in him. Not none.’
‘He’s been in fights, I’m told,’ Gently said.
She nodded. ‘Fights, yes. He’s been in them.’
‘He was put on a year’s probation,’ Gently said.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said. ‘Not a year’s probation.’
‘And a traffic offence. A speeding fine.’
She shrugged, looked at him. She twisted her mouth.
‘But he ain’t wicked,’ she said, ‘he wouldn’t kill no one. Not my son wouldn’t. Not Laurie.’
‘Would he smoke reefers?’ Gently asked.
She looked away. She said nothing.
Upstairs the jazz was going again and feet were slouching on the floor. A trumpet moaned, the saxes blared, drums thumped out a naive rhythm. They all glanced upwards.
‘I think I’d like to talk to Maureen,’ Gently said.
‘You’re welcome, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Elton.
Her lips tightened. She rose.
Maureen came in. She was a hefty girl with a tangled mop of honey-coloured hair. She wore a black shapeless sweater which came below her hips and had a sagging turtle-neck, calf-length jeans, and ballerina sandals. She was not made up. She had dirty nails. Her hands looked grubby and the fingers were nicotine-stained. Her expression was sulky and she didn’t look at the visitors. She sat down languidly on a pouffe, spreading her legs.
‘So you are Maureen,’ Gently said.
Maureen didn’t contradict him. She looked boredly out of the window, shaking her hair back from her eyes.
‘I’d like you to tell me about Laurie,’ Gently said. ‘About his friends and the things he did. And about Johnny Lister. And Betty Turner, about her.’
Maureen gave her hair a flick.
‘You answer him, my girl,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘Like why should I?’ said Maureen.
‘Because I tell you to,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘And give Laurie away?’ said Maureen.
‘Never you mind about that,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘Just you tell him what he wants to know. And none of that stupid talking, neither.’
‘These squares,’ Maureen said.
‘You hear what I tell you?’ said Mrs Elton.
Maureen drew up a leg, scratched her ankle a few times.
‘Like he was a jeebie,’ she said. ‘Cool. He went for it way out.’
‘Tell me about jeebies,’ Gently said.
‘You wouldn’t dig it,’ said Maureen. ‘If you’re a square you’re a square. It’s nowhere jazz to a square. But Laurie was cool, he went after it. Shooting the ton, that sort of action. But like I say you wouldn’t dig it. So what’s the use me talking?’
‘Where do they meet?’ Gently asked. ‘Do they have a club house or something?’
‘Man, you’re the most,’ said Maureen. ‘You ain’t getting it at all. Like it isn’t a club or that jazz, it’s the way people are. Like squares and jeebies. You’re either one or the other.’
‘And Lister was a jeebie?’ Gently asked.
‘Him too,’ Maureen said.
‘And Betty Turner?’ Gently asked.
‘She’s a chick, man. A cool chick.’
‘How did she go after it?’ Gently asked.
‘Like she shot the ton,’ Maureen said.
‘Like she was smoking sticks?’ Gently asked.
‘Like she may have done,’ Maureen said.
‘And what about Laurie,’ Gently asked. ‘Wasn’t he smoking sticks too?’
‘He went for kicks,’ Maureen said. ‘He went way out for wild kicks.’
‘Would you pass me your handbag?’ Gently said.
‘Like help yourself,’ said Maureen, grinning.
He took the drawstring bag she had brought with her and made a quick check of the contents. He handed it back. She grinned again. She took out a cigarette and lit it.
‘Man, I’ve known brighter squares,’ she said.
‘Take that smirk off your face,’ said Mrs Elton.
‘Like my face is my own,’ Maureen said. ‘I don’t have to keep it straight for nobody.’
Gently watched her for a moment. She puffed smoke towards him. She flicked her hair once or twice. She kept her eyes away from his. He said:
‘How well did you know Lister?’
‘I saw him around,’ Maureen said. ‘I wasn’t never a chick of his. I saw him around, like that.’
‘Didn’t he used to be friends with Laurie?’
‘Till the Turner chick,’ Maureen said.
‘Who else was he friends with?’ Gently asked.
‘Lots,’ Maureen said. ‘We all liked Johnny.’
‘Name some of the others.’
‘Sure,’ Maureen said. ‘There was Sidney Bixley and Dicky Deeming. And Jack Salmon. And Frankie Knights. Like he used to be way out with Dicky, but Dicky’s the coolest. We dig him big.’
‘Tell me about Dicky,’ Gently said.
‘Like I have done,’ said Maureen. ‘He’s crazy, he’s wild, he’s way out with the birds. We meet at his pad sometimes. He’s got a pad in Eastgate Street. We’ve got a combo and make with the music — man, it’s the wildest. I go for Dicky.’
‘He’s some sort of a writer,’ said Setters. ‘A long-hair. I checked him.’
‘He’s nice,’ said Mrs Elton. ‘He ain’t one of these silly kids.’
‘What does he write?’ Gently asked.
‘Booksy jazz,’ Maureen said. ‘He fakes some action for the papers, but that’s nowhere stuff, it isn’t it. Like he writes some wild poetry, jazz that really makes the touch. And he’s writing a book too. Man, that book is the craziest.’
‘And he was a special friend of Lister’s?’ Gently asked.
‘He’s friends with all of us,’ Maureen said. ‘I’ve got big eyes for that jeebie. But he don’t never have a regular chick.’
‘You’ve seen him since the accident?’ Gently asked.
‘Sure,’ Maureen said. ‘I saw him last night.’
‘What does he think about what’s happened?’
‘A kick,’ Maureen said. ‘The mostest.’
‘A kick for Lister?’
‘Like what else?’ she said. ‘Like he was touching and heard the birds. When you shoot the ton you get to touching. It sends you, man. Like you must go.’
‘How old are you?’ Gently asked.
‘I’m seventeen,’ she said. ‘Like Laurie.’
‘And where did you pick up all this jargon?’
‘Not from me, she didn’t,’ said Mrs Elton.
Maureen flipped her hair again, gave her other ankle a scratch.
‘Squares,’ she said. ‘Always squares. It’s a nowhere drag. It hangs me up.’
‘So that’s what you get,’ Setters said as they went down to the car. ‘Her brother talked like that too until I scared the daylights out of him. You put the fifty-dollar question. Where do they get this hokum from? It isn’t film-stuff, not the most of it, nor they don’t get it on TV. It just creeps in like an epidemic. It frightens me. They don’t care.’
Gently got in, slammed his door. ‘I know where it comes from,’ he said. ‘How it got here is another matter. I’d like the answer to that too.’
‘It came with the overspills,’ Setters mused.
Gently shook his head. ‘No. There’s something like it west of Whitehall, but not in Bethnal Green and Stepney.’
‘They don’t care,’ Setters repeated. ‘That’s what’s different about this lot. They’ve got that thing about touching something. And they’re not quite with you.’
‘What’s the Listers’ address?’ Gently asked.
‘Now there’s someone who cares,’ Setters said.